


The Omega Glory:  The Effect of Parallelograms on the Nature of the Universe

by Cheree_Cargill



Series: Glimpses of a Life [55]
Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 17:23:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14477574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheree_Cargill/pseuds/Cheree_Cargill
Summary: Again, the Enterprise has come across an Earth parallel.  Spock ponders why these keep turning up.





	The Omega Glory:  The Effect of Parallelograms on the Nature of the Universe

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: The Star Trek characters are the property of Paramount Studios, Inc. The story contents are the creation and property of Cheree Cargill and is copyright (c) 2018 by Cheree Cargill. This story is Rated PG.

_Stardate:_ _4701_.8 _._ _Personal Log. First Officer Spock recording._

 

 

When they brought the flag in, I felt my heart plummet with despair and my immediate thought was, “Oh, no, not again.”

We had landed on a parallel Earth. Again. How many did this make? There was Miri’s planet, with the devastating biological experiment gone awry, the result of which was that people died when they reached puberty. There was the planet with the Roman Empire which had never fallen and was now the equivalent of 20th Century North America. There was the parallel universe that was accidentally accessed while orbiting Halka. Do we count that one? And do we count the gangster world or the Nazi world? I think not because both of these were the result of interference by visiting Humans. But now there is Omega IV, one of the closest of all.

How many more will we encounter in this section of the galaxy? And I wonder why we have never come upon parallel Vulcan worlds or Klingon worlds or Andorian worlds? It always seems to be Earth worlds. Perhaps there are those out there somewhere but not within the scope of our patrol area.

Hodgkin’s Law of Parallel Planetary Development might account for many these similarities, of course, but to have such close development is illogical. This suggests a fractured timeline which we are encountering over and over again. I have read a theory that warp drive is rupturing the fabric of space but this has never been proven and humans have only been a warp‑capable civilization for 305 years, since first contact with the Vulcans in 2063. Of course, there are many, many warp civilizations in the galaxy, including the Vulcans. Perhaps we all have been doing untold damage to the space and timelines since the first warp flight who knows how many untold millennia ago?

But the parallels do not stop here. For the second time in less than a month, a starship crew has been reduced to their rudimentary chemicals -- our own encounter with the Kelvans just a few weeks ago and now this strange Omegan disease that has decimated the crew of the _Exeter_ to crystalline particles. I am grateful that the Kelvans restored our crew and also grateful that we found the _Exeter's_ physician's final log entry or else we would have returned to the _Enterprise_ and suffered the same fate.

And there is also the strange parallel of the loss of two starship crews and the madness that resulted as their captains survived. First there was Commodore Decker of the _Constellation_ who beamed down his entire crew to a planet for safety and then watched as the Planet Killer sliced that world to bits and ingested the rubble … and the dead humans as well. Little wonder that he went insane with grief and guilt and ultimately sacrificed his own life in a futile attempt to destroy it.

And now Captain Tracey of the _Exeter_ , currently in our custody, after his landing party contracted a disease on the planet and spread it to the rest of the crew, killing them in a most grotesque manner. Again there is little wonder that his human mind could not process this information but latched onto the belief that the Kohms possessed a miraculous antidote that could have saved his crew.

Would Captain Kirk do the same under similar circumstances? He exhibited those tendencies in the encounter with the gaseous entity that killed his former commander, Captain Garrovick of the _Farragut_ and half the crew. I would not say that he was insane with his obsession to hunt down and destroy the entity, but his psyche was unbalanced at the time. Starship captains go through the most rigorous testing and evaluation, both physical and mental, and yet the human mind cannot handle the loss of so many lives entrusted to their care.

I think it was fortunate that the captain of the _Intrepid_ died with his crew. Would a Vulcan go insane as the humans did? Even I, only connected by the thin strand of social consciousness to my fellow Vulcans, sensed the blow of their deaths so strongly that I almost felt myself dying with them. I thank my Ancestors that it was so quick for them and for me.

But were I the captain of a ship, perhaps the _Enterprise_ itself, and I knew that my ship and crew were doomed if I did not act, would I have the fortitude and courage to sacrifice myself for their lives? The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, we say on Vulcan. But if I were that one, could I stride into a phaser battle so that my crew could get out of the line of fire? Could I walk into a warp chamber and endure the radiation to bring the mains back on line if it saved the ship? Could I face an execution squad if it allowed my vessel to escape from certain destruction?

I will never know. At least I can only hope that I won't.

THE END

 


End file.
